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I signed up with a Verizon Wireless data plan a few days before the close of 2015 after moving to a new place. Initially paranoid about data usage and Verizon's integrity in reporting such, I maintained activity logs on all my machines with vnstat (0). But I became more at ease after a few months when I determined that Verizon's reported usage always stayed slightly below vnstat's report for each network interface (which also includes network traffic that only takes place on the LAN or with the router device itself that isn't actually sent over the airwaves). I won't suggest the article's complaints are baseless, however, even if the article itself reflects the poor community journalism I remember expecting from the Post-Standard. Because even if Verizon isn't falsifying usage data for users, the whole game is partly rigged! A typical user has no idea what their actual usage is, or what their devices do automagically in their absence. I've seen 10 GB prepaid cell data allowances get liquidated the very evening of the day they were topped off by project volunteers using laptops. In one case, a user checking and writing email forgot to disable Windows Updates. In another instance, the user had no concept of how large the neat videos he uploaded to the project's FB page actually were. Without a real concept of how much data they actually use, most users will end up finding a data plan mostly by trial & error--they will go as cheap as they can, and incrementally adjust to a larger plan when they "go over" (rinse & repeat). I think of the numerous uncomfortable talks and arguments in households everywhere based on stupid ideas of what constitutes data use, and parents who are no better informed than their children about what they can do to actually reduce household data usage. And yes, turning off automatic updates, "wifi assist", and other settings is good advice. Except that many of these settings have a mysterious way of getting re-enabled in commercial OSes. Why is it necessary for users to constantly police their own device settings because the Apples, Microsofts, and Googles of the world have other ideas? If you're running a non-libre OS (which is unavoidable on smart phones, presently), you might as well expect some hardship here. Your device does what it wants, because its makers don't think it actually belongs to you. I suspect that the main reason my experience with Verizon Wireless has been nearly painless (if not inexpensive) is because I keep only a dumb phone and several machines installed with Slackware. My data usage may be larger some months, but I always know why! It's never a surprise. 0: http://humdi.net/vnstat/ |